Cookin’

With a bit of time on my hands in the last few weeks, thanks to a few weeks free of absolute chaos that normally prevails at work, I’ve been cooking waaaaay more than I normally do (during busy times at work it’s pretty much M&S and the microwave). Partly for my own benefit, I thought I’d link the recipes I’ve recently discovered:

Baked fish with homemade hollandaise-like sauce. It’s too much for me without adding some milk at the very end, and I often add some extra lemon juice then too, but no matter how many times I’ve tried to make it, it always works and it is soooooooo tasty! Although nothing I’ve found in the UK compares with the Chilean sea-bass one can get at Whole Foods in the US…

You can see, I’ve been going to town with seafood lately; those who are relatively new to this blog will not know that I am a demi-reformed vegetarian; when I moved to the UK, I found that there was not nearly enough of the stuff I was used to eating and I got a bit protein-deprived. I desperately miss Morningstar bacon and breaded chicken-like patties and oh the veggie buffalo wings, not to mention Yves veggie pepperoni! When in the US I always buy these things even though I do eat fish now. But alas, faced with nothing but Quorn in the UK, I decided to drop the vegetarian thing, and started eating fish one day in a memorable pub visit for fish and chips with my sister. Now I’ve been trying to learn everything I can about cooking fish and making tasty but healthy foods (i.e. those that don’t involve breading like the ubiquitous UK pub fare). This is part of my bigger shape-up routine of the last six or eight months since I joined a gym, albeit one that has a bar in it! Still a bit mystified by that one, to see beer available instead of carrot smoothies… they also recently were advertising a free piece of cake when you bought a cup of coffee, which makes me giggle every time I think about it–only in England. And how is the shape-up going, one might ask? Ask me in a few months. After progress made up to the middle of December when I went to Australia, it’s been a bit two-steps-forward-one-step-back. But the last two weeks have been pretty good, and I’ll keep trying, with the help of these new recipes!